"If anybody," said Mr. Hemingway with gallantry, "could lead a young gentleman to so sweeping a reform, it would be yourself."
"There is no sequence of generations," said Miss Tennant, "long enough to eradicate a drop of Irish blood."
Mr. Hemingway swept the jewels together and wrapped them in the tissue-paper in which she had brought them.
"Are you going to put them in your safe--or return them to me?" she asked plaintively.
"I am thanking God fervently, ma'am," said he, "that you didn't ask me for more. You'll have to give me your note. By the way, are you of age?"
Her charming eyes narrowed, and she laughed at him.
"People," she said, "are already beginning to say, 'she will hardly marry now.' But it's how old we feel, Mr. Hemingway, isn't it?"
"I feel about seven," said he, "and foolish at that."
"And I," said she, "will be twenty-five for the second time on my next birthday."
"And, by the way," she said, when the details of the loan had been arranged and she had stuffed the five thousand dollars into the palm of a wash glove, "nobody must know about this, because I shall have to say that--my gewgaws have been stolen."
"But that will give Aiken a black eye," said he.
"I'm afraid it can't be helped, Mr. Hemingway. Papa will ask point-blank why I never wear the pearls he gave me, and I shall have to anticipate."
"Oh," she said demurely, "to-night or to-morrow night I shall rouse the household with screams, and claim that I woke and saw a man bending over my dressing-table--a man with a beautiful white mustache and imperial."
Mr. Hemingway's right hand flew to his mouth as if to hide these well-ordered appendages, and he laughed.
"In a business matter pure and simple," she said, after a moment's reflection, "it is nothing--absolutely nothing."
"Not being found out by one's parents is hardly a business matter," said Mr. Hemingway.
"Oh," said she with a shiver, "as a little girl I went into the hands of a receiver at least once a month----"
"A hand of iron in a velvet glove," murmured Mr. Hemingway.
"Oh, no," she said, "a leather slipper in a nervous hand.... But how can I thank you?"
She rose, still demure and cool, but with a strong sparkling in her eyes as from a difficult matter successfully adjusted.